PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis arrived in Vilnius for the NATO Summit and said that Greece and Turkey had major differences adding that a roadmap could be agreed upon.

“We are meeting here in Vilnius as the Russian invasion of Ukraine is still raging a few hundred kilometres away. Reaffirming the basic principles of the alliance is therefore more necessary today than ever before, and I would like to welcome the decision in principle by Turkey and President Erdogan to accept Sweden into the alliance, and I hope that very soon our friend Sweden will officially become the 32nd member of our alliance.

I will, as you know, have the opportunity to meet President Erdogan in person tomorrow in our first meeting since our double election victory. I believe that both of us with a strong popular mandate can take a first step to restart relations between Greece and Turkey. As I have said many times, we are not condemned to live with Turkey in a constant climate of tension. We obviously have significant differences, but we can agree that, based on good neighbourly relations and respect for international law, we will draw up a road map so that we can resolve our geopolitical dispute, which is none other than the delimitation of maritime zones, i.e. the EEZ and the continental shelf, in the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean.

A positive climate has developed in recent months in relations between our two countries and I hope and look forward to building on this positive climate and making some significant steps forward, steps forward that will obviously be to the benefit of both our peoples.”